Strawberry

Diagnostics

NC STATE UNIVERSITY

Brian Whipker

Floriculture Extension and Research

National Strawberry

Sustainability Initiative

Strawberry Diagnostic: A Problem Solving Tool

• Strawberry growers face with unknown plant disorders during the production season.

• A comprehensive, holistic problem-solving identification tool will aid in rapid identification of arthropod, disease, physiological, and nutritional disorders and will allow growers to select the most appropriate management strategy.

• This project created a web-based interactive diagnostic key that strawberry growers can access via their computer, tablet, or smart phone.

TEAM

Holistic

Team Members

• Entomology – Hannah Joy Burrack

• Plant Pathology – Frank Louws and Barbara

Shew

• Horticulture Production – Jeremy Pattison and

Rocco Schiavone

• Plant Nutrition – Brian Whipker

• Web Development – Rob Ladd and Rhonda

Conlan

PROCESS

Steps

Key Development

• Disorder identification

• Key attributes for differentiating disorders

• Build key framework

• Write fact sheets

• Populate the key with fact sheets

• Beta testing

Key Development

• Disorder identification

– Arthropod (Insects) (21)

– Diseases (26)

– Physiological (24)

– Nutritional (14)

Key Development

• Key attributes for differentiating disorders

– Primarily location based (age)

• Upper foliage

• Overall foliage

• Lower foliage

• Crown

• Roots

– Symptoms

• For example: chlorotic vs necrotic leaves

Strawberry Plant

Crown

NC STATE UNIVERSITY

Roots

LeavesFlower

Fruit

Runner

Key Development

• Build key framework

– The Strawberry Diagnostic Key allows users to

identify the most likely cause of symptoms

present on their crop.

Attributes

Attributes

Key Development

• Disorders can be defined and edited in real

time.

• Disorders definitions are cloud based, so

multiple applications have access to the data.

– This means that a description for, say, Strawberry

Boron (B) Deficiency can be used for this tool, and

also for a news item on common strawberry

nutrition disorders, for example.

– That is, the information need not be recreated

each time a specialist needs data on that disorder.

Key Development

• The tool is a

responsive web

application,

meaning it works

well on Desktop,

tablet and

mobile phones.

Key Development

• The Strawberry Diagnostic Key is compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. '794 d)

• It uses a modern MVC backend to handle HTTP requests and Object Relational Mapping for all database queries (Django / Python / MySQL). – This means that the application meets industry standards for security,

scalability and reliability.

• The architecture of the application is modular, so upgrades and maintenance can be developed and tested using industry standards.

• The same technology is used on high-traffic, high-availability sites like The New York Times, The Washington Post, NASA, Pinterest, etc.

• Usage metrics will be available through Google analytics, a service that generates detailed statistics about a website's traffic and traffic sources. This will allow us to tell how many people are using the tool, how they are using it and how they found it.

• With these analytic data, we can tailor the tool to make it more effective and easier to use.

Key Development

• Write fact sheets

• Populate the key

with fact sheets

• Beta testing

Key Development

SUMMARY

Summay

• Objective:

– Create a diagnostics key (by June 30, 2014)

• We have create the framework of an interactive key for diagnosing strawberry disorders.

• Created fact sheets for each disorder.

• Use of the key will aid growers in problem identification and allow them to take corrective actions before crop losses occur.

KEY DEMO

Web Link

• Key will be housed in the NC State University

Strawberry Portal

http://strawberries.ces.ncsu.edu/